Free The Book of Secrets by M.G. Vassanji

came up in a spring, and later at Lake Jipe, before flowing towards the Pare mountain range back in German territory. He was told the area had been explored by Maynard two years before.
    In Taveta the government station was now vacant, though a new ADC was on his way Corbin stayed four days, to hear petitions and dispense salaries, and he ordered a clean-up of the town on the last day.
    On their way back they made a detour to see the hallowed site of local legend, the peaceful Lake Chala, which lay secluded among the hills and mountains. They were taken to it by two Masai youths they met in the vicinity, who without a word but understanding their purpose led them through coarse bush up a steep path on a hill. They arrived at the summit abruptly, and found themselves looking down upon a breathtaking sight: a blue lake, crystal-clear below them, wavelets stirring across it, and presiding in the distance the mighty snow-topped mountain that fed it. The Masai each carried a long staff. They grinned proudly at Corbin, then proceeded to climb down, leaping from clump to clump of shrub and sliding towards the water. Their young voices cut sharply through the pristine air. Corbin, a little nervous, felt compelled, followed, then hesitated halfway. The youths stopped to wait for him, then one of them threw the mzungu his staff, and doggedly Corbin descended after them.
    For a long moment he crouched on his haunches at the lake’s side, under a clear sky, watching the clean, irregular edge of the water with the land rising steeply all around it, breathing the cool air, feeling it play on his skin, oblivious to anything else. It was a place so unique in its beauty, so much at peace with itself, so unviolated, he felt he had come to the site of Creation itself.

5
    There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between that nature’s secret, the Edenic Chala, and the pioneering hustle and bustle of man-made Nairobi, where Corbin found himself unexpectedly but not unwillingly a few weeks later. In his isolation he had often longed for even a brief foray into the European life of Nairobi. His application to sit for the language examination in the capital, and to show his face at the Secretariat, was considered an indulgence, but was approved, by his DC , Hobson of Voi.
    It was the morning of the day before Nairobi’s Race Week when he arrived.
    “You realize, of course,” Mrs. Unsworth said to Corbin with a glint in her eye, “that the Norfolk, Torr’s, the Embassy, all the clubs — everything in Nairobi — is absolutely booked. You can put up in our guest house, if you don’t mind.”
    “Oh, but he must!” said her niece Anne.
    “That’s very kind of you,” he said.
    The girl was radiant with life.
    Edwina Unsworth and her niece had come to collect him at the railway station. There was something charmingly childlike about the way Anne was dressed, and yet decidedly odd — the safari skirt with pockets and leather belt with gun holster, the collar and tie, the wide-brimmed hat.
    “I told you he’d recognize it,” said Mrs. Unsworth pointedly to her niece.
    As he did, of course, from the outfit of Princess Amelia in the recent newspaper photographs of a royal hunting expedition. Like the princess, Anne was small in build, and she had golden curls under her hat.
    “It suits you better,” he said graciously, and everybody was pleased.
    Mrs. Unsworth was a bigger, middle-aged, woman. She wore a simple dress and on her head a double terai lined with the customary red as protection from the sun. “Jack couldn’t come away,” she explained as they got into the buggy. “He’ll meet us later.” A larger party near them was having their luggage loaded into a wagon drawn by two mules in the charge of a huge man in riding boots swinging a long whip. “That’s Omar Khan,” said Anne. “He’s from South Africa and absolutely indispensable in this town.”
    Corbin had corresponded with the Unsworths unevenly since meeting